1. Field
The present disclosure is directed to a method and apparatus for cell detection in a wireless communication system. More particularly, the present disclosure is directed to extracting information from frames of a physical channel for cell detection.
2. Introduction
Cellular communication devices used in today's society include mobile phones, personal digital assistants, portable computers, and various other electronic communication devices. A cellular communication device communicates with a cellular network by sending and receiving signals to and from a base station in a cell. To communicate with the cell, the cellular communication device must first synchronize with the cell. To synchronize with the cell, the cellular communication device extracts information from a payload from frames of a physical channel of the cell. After the cellular communication device synchronizes with the cell, the cellular communication device considers the cell available for communications.
For example, in a universal mobile telecommunication system, a cellular communication device must perform multiple primary common control physical channel (PCCPCH) decoding attempts over successive radio frames to extract a system frame number (SFN). The cellular communication device then uses successful cyclic redundancy check (CRC) decoding as the sole criterion to validate the received system frame number and thereby consider the cell available for communications.
The cell system frame number is transmitted via a broadcast channel, such as the primary common control physical channel, of each cell to allow the cellular communication device to detect each cell through framing and timing. Cyclic redundancy checks are used to detect any block errors. Unfortunately, under low signal conditions, all the decoding attempts may fail the cyclic redundancy check, but the transmitted system frame numbers are not necessarily corrupted. Thus, even though the cellular communication device is able to synchronize to the cell, the cellular communication device instead ignores the cell because it erroneously determines it cannot extract information from a payload from frames of the PCCPCH of the cell. This limits the availability of cells that the cellular communication device can use for communicating with a network.
Thus, there is an opportunity for a different method and apparatus for cell detection in a wireless communication system.